Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein told CNN that McCain was more intimately involved in the documents than he admitted.

“It came from a former British MI6 agent who was hired from a political opposition research firm in Washington who was doing work about Donald Trump for both republican and democratic candidates opposed to Trump,” he said.

“They were looking at Trumps business ties, they saw some questionable things about Russians, about his businesses in Russia, they in turn hired this MI6 former investigator, he then came up with additional information from his Russian sources, he was very concerned by the implications of it, he then took it to a FBI colleague that he had known in his undercover work for years, he took it to this FBI man in Rome who turned it over to the bureau in Washington in August.”

“And then, a former British ambassador to Russia independently was made aware of these findings and he took the information to John McCain – Senator John McCain of Arizona – in the period just after the election, and showed it to McCain – additional findings.”

“McCain was sufficiently disturbed by what he read to take it to FBI director James Comey himself personally, they had a five-minute meeting, very little was said, McCain turned it over to him and is now awaiting what the FBI’s response is to that information.”